How to Use Font in Excel Expressions

by Steve McDonnell, Demand Media

You can highlight data in Excel based on an expression you create.

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Sometimes the way you display information is just as important as the information you display. Whether you're creating spreadsheets for clients or management, using fonts and colors with formulas and expressions in Excel can help you direct the audience's attention to the important areas or values on a spreadsheet. In Excel, you can not only designate a font to display with the values of Excel expressions, but you can also create expressions that determine the font applied to a cell using the conditional formatting feature.

Font for Excel Formula

Enter data into the spreadsheet. For example, type the following column headers in the first row for a spreadsheet that tracks checking account transactions (don't type the underscores)::Date__Type____Amount_____Balance
_________________________1324.88
1/6___Check ___242.00
1/8___Charge____27.34
1/10__Charge____16.82
1/13__Check____174.38

Click the balance cell in the second row. Enter the formula to compute a new account balance based on the number in the Amount cell. For example, type the following formula and press "Enter:"=D4-C3

Step 4

Click the cell with the formula you entered. Copy the formula to the other cells in the column by grabbing the lower-right corner of the cell with your mouse pointer, dragging it down to the last row of data and releasing the mouse.

Step 5

Use the mouse to highlight the data in the Amount column. Right-click and choose "Format columns..." Click "Number" in the Category column and choose the last entry in the Negative Number box that has the numbers displayed in red with parentheses.

Step 6

Use the mouse to highlight the data in the Balance column. Right-click and apply the same formatting as the Amount column, then click the "Font" tab. Adjust the font you want to use for the values based on the Excel expression.

Conditional Formatting

Step 1

Highlight the values in the Amount column. Click the "Conditional Formatting" button on the ribbon bar, select "Highlight Cells Rules" and "Greater Than..."

Step 2

Type "100" in the box and select a predefined font color to display when a number in the Amount column is greater than 100. Click "OK" when done.

Step 3

Click "Custom..." instead of a predefined font color to bring up a font selection box. Select the font, size, color and other attributes to go with the conditional Excel expression you created.

About the Author

Steve McDonnell began writing and speaking nationally in 1987. He has authored chapters for the "Foundation Series Go-To Guide" for International Human Resource Information Management and for the "West Compensation Guide" from Thomson Reuters. He also blogs for Trends and Outliers, Tibco Spotfire's business intelligence blog. McDonnell has a Bachelor of Arts in computer science from Dartmouth College.

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